


The Game Of Chess Begins

by Memories_of_the_Shadows



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Complete, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Secret Identity Fail, Witness Protection, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memories_of_the_Shadows/pseuds/Memories_of_the_Shadows
Summary: Clarice thought she was free of her old life.  But Hannibal is far too dangerous and important a person in her life both past and present and she can't keep her secret any longer.
Relationships: Abigail Hobbs & Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter & Clarice Starling, Will Graham & Abigail Hobbs
Kudos: 4





	The Game Of Chess Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from “Retaliate” by VNV Nation. Seriously, this song fits so well.
> 
> ~~I forgot I included Miggs’ canon actions which is what the added tags are for, I’m so sorry~~
> 
> I do not consent to my work being hosted on any unofficial apps, especially any with ad revenue and subscription services, or any website other than ao3 unless I personally cross-posted a work.

Clarice breathes deep and evenly, calming herself the way she was taught in another time. Another life.

Joining the FBI has been her dream for years, and she knew when she was doing it that there was a chance that she might come face to face with visions from her past. She’s unrecognizable now--as far removed from her former self as only death can make her--something she’s worked hard at, but it is one thing to lie to and be believed by the infamous Jack Crawford.

It’s quite another to do it to Hannibal Lecter.

Anticipation feels a lot like fear, but it has been many years since she’s confused the two. Dr. Chilton--she admires his sheer stubbornness, in staying in this place watching over the person who framed him and tried to murder him as well, even if she doesn’t understand it--underestimates her. Everyone does. It works to her advantage, so she lets them.

Her first sight of Hannibal Lecter caged is very reminiscent of the first time she can remember seeing him free. Tall and watching, waiting, only his smile is much wider now. Prison suits him apparently.

“Hello,” he says, voice as soft and welcoming as ever. His accent’s faded a bit, or maybe he’s decided to change it, which would be very like him. A new voice for his new circumstances. She has no room to talk.

“Dr. Lecter,” rolls off her tongue as easily as it ever did, “my name is Clarice Starling. May I speak with you?” She smiles at him, because it is polite. UVA might not have been a charm school but she knows only too well the price of rudeness in Hannibal’s company. She’s experienced it before.

“You’re one of Jack Crawford’s, aren’t you?” he asks, and it sounds perfunctory, as if he knows the answer and is amused by it but not particularly invested. He smiles at her, and for the first time she believes she may get past this. That she’s free of him, finally.

“I am, yes, sir.” A laugh tries to force its way out of her throat. Jack Crawford likely has no idea who Clarice is yet. Just another trainee, disposable until someone disposes of her then he will beat his chest and roar like he did for Miriam Lass. But he won’t learn from those mistakes. In all his years at the Bureau he never has.

“May I see your credentials?”

The question is bittersweet, and Clarice worries she will always find it so. She has those credentials, she digs for them, but there was no one to congratulate her, to spur her on when it was difficult, so she learned to motivate herself. Only recently has dear Ardelia changed her loneliness even slightly.

“Closer, please. Closer.” She knows it’s a trick, a game, but knows better than to refuse. It may have been years since he last escaped, but that is only because he likes it that way for the moment. He steps closer, and Clarice stands her ground.

“That expires in one week. You’re not real FBI, are you?” The dig hits right where it was meant to, and she fights the urge to bring up his precious Will Graham. _He_ wasn’t real FBI either, and yet.

“I’m still in training at the Academy,” she says, and just a little bit of fury thickens her voice. It’s a dangerous game to get angry with Hannibal--to acknowledge when a hit digs up under her ribs to her heart or guts her soft belly--but it’s not more or even less dangerous than the game she is already playing.

Hannibal looks gleeful, so much more expressive than she remembers. “Jack Crawford sent _me_ a trainee?” The ‘again’ is unspoken but rings loud in her ears. Maybe Crawford thinks Miriam Lass really was abducted by Frederick Chilton and not Hannibal Lecter. It would be like him to keep his head so much in the sand.

“Yes. I’m a student.” It sounds like victim when it leaves her mouth and she hates Crawford and Lecter and everyone else who tried to make her less than she was. Is. “I’m here to learn from you.” Her voice stumbles on the lie--she’s learned all she wants to from him long ago--and she reminds herself to breathe. “Maybe you can decide for yourself whether or not I’m qualified enough to do that.” She is. She more than is. Even if she is the only one who knows exactly _how_ qualified.

“Mmm. That is rather slippery of you Agent Starling.” She doesn’t carry a hunting knife anymore and it’s absence itches in that moment. “Sit, please.”

It grates to follow that order but she does. Hannibal doesn’t, and she sees it for the power play it is. Crude but effective.

She tucks her hair behind her ear--a nervous gesture that she shouldn’t have revealed to this predator no matter how many memories she has of him feeling safer than anyone else in her life--and the way he stares at it tells her her mistake before he even speaks.

“How did you lose it? Your ear, I mean. A very… distinctive… injury. I applaud your surgeon. One can hardly tell.” One breath. Two. Three. Deep, even, and her heart doesn’t even race.

(“They can hear your heartbeat, smell your fear. Just breathe for me, wait for the perfect moment. You’ll know when to strike,” whispers in her ear from a thousand years ago, a memory she thought she left behind.

“Don’t get excited, let them come to you. It will take as long as it takes,” says another, this one shaded with memories more dear but also more tragic.)

“My father did it,” she says, telling the truth like a lie to Hannibal Lecter’s face. He smiles, evidently pleased by the thought, and Clarice thinks about gutting a deer, about descaling a fish, with his face on it. It will have to be enough. She won’t stoop to his level. She killed a man once because of his manipulations and she will never do it again.

“Mmm. Did he get caught?” Unholy glee lights up his voice, and sparkles in his eyes. Not for the first time, Clarice wonders what kind of girl would have trusted such a monster, what kind of man would have fallen in love with him. She doesn’t think he was always this obvious though. She thinks at one time he had clutched at what pearls of humanity he had left. They’re gone now. She doesn’t know when or how or why. She doesn’t want to.

Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier wrote on the subject--sometime before she was found dismembered and displayed similar to the manner of Beauchêne skulls, though they never did find her legs; Clarice is sure there was nothing left of them to find--that, ‘Dr. Lecter is a remarkable example of where the monsters in fairy tales come from. Superficially charming, well-tailored and mannered, and an extremely intelligent conversationalist one might know Dr. Lecter for many years--might attend parties and dinners with him, might count him as a friend--without seeing through the proverbial human suit. But at the slightest hint of what might be termed _corruptibility_ on one’s part, and one might be introduced to concepts better left to fables by a man who better resembles the sly wolf than the wise mentor he plays so well. Seeing even a small gap in the seams leads one to wonder what else may be under it, and more recent revelations make one prefer never to know…’

Clarice cannot help but think that that candidness with which Dr. Du Maurier wrote played a part in her death. Her term, ‘human suit’, however, fits very well. The well-dressed, mannerly, if occasionally frightening man from her memories does not match with the visibly gleeful and pricking monster before her. Is this another facet of him? Or is this the real, slavering monster beneath?

Abruptly, she wants to hurt him, wants to have the emotional response from him _now_ that she never got _then_. And Clarice knows how to get it. “My father’s _dead_. My mother killed him,” she says with all the fury and waspishness that she normally never allows herself to feel.

It doesn’t match the story Lecter knows, the script that he thinks they are working off of. She sees it when the pieces connect, when that one part that doesn’t fit slots into place. A bright flare of anger flits across his face. A true display of emotion for once, anger was always the easiest to provoke in her father as well. What does it say about Clarice that she is quick to anger as well? “And your mother?” His voice is soft, neutral, more like her memories than the caricature she is now sure he plays simply to amuse himself. The only sure motivation for Hannibal Lecter is amusement. She supposes that is more insight than most have. Certainly more than Jack Crawford. Probably not more than Will.

She knows him well enough to guess who he has cast as her mother, and she flips the script. ( _‘Breathe, don’t let them smell your fear.’ ‘They’ll hook themselves, don’t worry, just breathe.’_ ) “My mother is dead, too.” She breathes, calm and steady, and watches as he believes her.

The trouble is that she is not sure that is a lie.

Once, she remembers distantly like it was a dream, she broke a teacup of his. Maybe it was a dream. But she remembers seeing it crack and splinter apart like it was in slow motion. Watching him now, it feels very much the same.

There’s no trace of the caricature, nothing of the human suit, anymore, and she’s seen this side of him once before.

Last time her name was Abigail and she bled out on his kitchen floor. This time her name is Clarice and she will not be afraid of him.

“I see you, Dr. Lecter. I’ve always seen you.” It goes against her every instinct, rips up every procedure and warning she was given, but she steps closer to his cage. He watches her, patient as a trapdoor spider, waiting for the right moment, the right opening to start a new game. “How does it feel to know you will never see Will Graham again, Dr. Lecter?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Clarice.” She gets a warning. Maybe he did care about her once upon another life. Not as much as he did Will, but for a man who has only ever truly cared about two people in his life, potentially being the third means something.

Nothing good, given what he did to his sister and Will, but still gratifying to an extent.

(Clarice has read everything that has ever been published on Hannibal Lecter. She’s not sure if it’s penance, a ‘know thy enemy’ instinct, or some masochistic combination of both. She’s done the same with the Minnesota Shrike, and the Copycat Killer. It’s made her a favorite among her professors and less so amongst her peers. At least she has Ardelia, even if she doesn’t dare tell her the full truth. Better to let Abigail Hobbes molder in her grave. Clarice Starling has a clear, bright future and the wings to fly towards it.)

“Every game with you is a dangerous one, Doctor.” She wishes she could hate him. Hating him would be easier. She’ll cling to her anger for as long as it will last but it will burn out eventually. Then God only knows what she will be left with but she doubts it will be anything good. “I’m not here for pleasantries, Dr. Lecter.”

“I tried to teach you once, Clarice. I’m afraid I do not see my influence on you anymore.” She brushes her hair behind her ear again, this time far more deliberately. Clarice is almost disappointed in him. She’ll bear his marks for the rest of her life. There’s only so much makeup can cover. Only so much plastic surgery can fix.

She stands and shrugs when the silence stretches. It’s not quite a dismissal but she decides to take it as one, and Clarice gathers her things, striding off without a glance backward.

Hannibal hisses between his teeth--probably at her rudeness, but he is caged and she just _does not care anymore_ \--and the old man in his neighboring cell shrieks something obscene right before something warm and slimy hits her cheek.

Rage flashes through her, crashing through the fear that so many memories of the past bring, through the biting bitterness that no matter what she does, how she changes, people will only ever see her as either a victim or an accomplice through her ignorance. It slides along her cheek like the snails they found Hannibal cultivating on what was later found to be Abel Graham’s leg and she _longs_ for a hunting knife to grip in her hand.

Sound tides back in, the seconds it takes feeling more like hours, and Hannibal is calling her name, “Ms. Starling, Clarice, come back to me!” Her body turns and runs back to him, back to safety, without her mind’s conscious agreement and she hates that one moment of fear, one moment of murderous intent is enough to send her back into that devil’s embrace that is Hannibal Lecter’s company. It doesn’t stop her from pressing up against the glass, from seeking comfort in the knowledge that she is momentarily safe in the shadow of a bigger predator and she hates herself even more for the weakness she hasn’t managed to excise from herself yet.

“I did not mean for that to happen, I would never want that for you. Such _rudeness_ ,” that word shudders along her spine and Clarice will be surprised if Miggs will survive the night, “has its own reward. _Clarice_ ,” he says, and it’s like he’s tasting the name she picked for herself. She wonders if it tells her history as easily as her flesh would. (She’s never going to forget the taste of her proxies, of Hannibal’s exquisitely crafted disdain. She has no taste for ‘home-cooking’ anymore, not when it tastes like that. It is very rare and almost entirely due to Ardelia when she can manage anything more than salads these days.)

His pale eyes bore into her, and she feels all of eighteen again--finally free of one monster only for a bigger one to dog her every step--and his voice rumbles straight into her brain like she’s never aged a day since that horrible night. “If you go now, and quickly, he shouldn’t be able to do it again, my dear. I would like to see you again. I find your company… a soothing reminder of better days. If you are willing. We could even trade. Jack has a new prey to hunt and no Will to force into the murderer’s mind, no enterprising Ms. Lass to stumble upon the truth.” Except, Clarice knows she’s excelled, knows she matches Miriam Lass’s profile at least superficially. That makes far more sense than to think that someone who has no connection to Hannibal as far as Crawford is concerned would have any more insight than all of those who have tried before. She wants to be angry, but instead she’s just resigned.

Clarice has only ever been a prod for others, a tool to be used. Except for Ardelia. Except for _Will_.

She turns and leaves, almost running, when Hannibal tells her to. She already knows she’ll be back. Better Hannibal’s dubious company giving him whatever drips of information she can find on Will Graham than let another killer run free.

After her rebirth on that bloody kitchen floor watching one of the only people who ever cared for her unconditionally try and save her at the cost of his own life--she doesn’t even know if he died there or not. She never asked. WITSEC had whisked her away from that hospital before she had even woken up and it was just such a _blessing_ that she never questioned it.

When she had left WITSEC she should have known it couldn’t last. Should have known that she would be dragged back into Hannibal’s orbit. It would be less… selfish of her to refuse to come back, refuse to disturb whatever peace--whatever sort of _life_ \--Will has carved out of the ashes Hannibal left him.

Clarice has never been anything but selfish though. She’ll play coy with Hannibal for as long as possible, out of respect for what Will was to her for a short time, but the moment he dangles bait tempting enough in front of her she’ll bite.

She always has. (And she knows that Hannibal knows that too. He’ll play her just like always, and perhaps his skills are a bit rusty with disuse, but they won’t be for long. Clarice will just have to be careful what strings she lets him touch.)

**Author's Note:**

> So when I first watched the tv show a little over a year ago, it struck me how very similar Abigail looks to Clarice in "The Silence of the Lambs". I've watched TSotL a lot, actually, because it was the number one movie in the year that I was born and I think that explains a lot about me as a person. But once I had this idea it wouldn't go away and I just had to write it. After I re-watched the movie, of course. This had been intended for Halloween last year but... things happen. It's here now!
> 
> ~~Also, I don't think Will is actually dead in this AU, but Clarice wanted to dangle the chicken in front of the hungry alligator and I decided to let her.~~
> 
> If you'd like, come visit me on [tumblr](https://sachinighte.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
